Tuesday, January 21, 2014

HearthStone Open Beta is here!

Yes! It’s finally here! The open beta of HearthStone has arrived! Yes, HearthStone is Blizzard’s take on a F2P game (free to play). It’s a card game, and it’s awesome. Go play it. NOW.

The wait is over: The Hearthstone Open Beta Test is now live in North America! If you haven’t had the chance to partake in all of the crazy card-slinging action yet, now is the perfect chance to start casting powerful spells, summon mighty minions and duel your friends in this fast-paced strategy card game that anyone can dive into right away!

It’s been a crazy past few months for all of us on the Hearthstone team. We announced Hearthstone at PAX East back in March, began the Closed Beta Test in August, had a great Hearthstone event at BlizzCon with the Innkeeper’s Invitational along with our announcements for Android and iPhone support, and now we’re ready to unleash the awesomeness of Hearthstone to you with Open Beta!

So what does this mean for you? If you didn’t get the chance to participate in the Hearthstone Closed Beta Test, now is your chance to download the game! Just click here to download Hearthstone, or you can use the Play Free Now button at the top of playhearthstone.com. We have no plans to perform any more wipes of Hearthstone, so feel free to amass your collection and play against your friends!

What if you don’t play in the North American region? Don’t worry; we plan to go to Open Beta for all of the other regions within the next few days as well, so stay tuned for more information!

As open beta is still a beta phase, we will be closely monitoring many aspects of the game to ensure a positive play experience for everyone. Please be aware that if smoke starts curling out of our servers due to unexpectedly high demand to play Hearthstone, we may have to temporarily disable open beta account activations for a time until we’re ready to take on more players.